the Greater Nomadic Council

The Stench of Doping

I am a Lance Armstrong fan. I think Lance is the most inspiring and charismatic athlete of my lifetime. His 5th stage win in yesterday's time trial added yet another exclamation point to his incredible achievement. Today, he will win a record 6th Tour in a row in a more dominant fashion than anyone imagined, especially after his difficulties last year. No one doubts that Lance is one of the most professional, dedicated, and mentally tough riders in the peloton and this psychic superiority is essential to his success.

Yet I also believe Armstrong is a doper. As far as I'm concerned, the chances that Lance and his major rivals aren't doping are increasingly slim.

As a fan and someone who loves cycling, this contradiction isn't easy to live with.

There is of course no hard evidence that Lance is doping (yet). But if one pays enough attention to cycling, one notices that Lance doesn't act like a man who is trying to play fair in a sport full of cheaters. Every honest fan acknowledges that Raimondas Rumsas was doping on his way to 3rd place in the Tour in 2002. Did the threat of being upstaged by a drug-using fraud irritate Lance? Hardly. I haven’t heard any words of outrage from Lance on the fact that Rumsas never tested positive for anything, despite being tested 3 times. Zipped lips.

Or consider Lance's buddy David Millar, who was recently forced to admit he was using EPO when he won the final TT in last year's Tour. Has cycling's leading rider issued any words of regret that the peloton was duped by a shameless liar and cheater (who, also, never tested positive)? As far as I know, the silence is deafening.

No cyclist is interested in outing anyone else. Even the athletes that take an active and believable stance against doping consistently refuse to name names. Lance, it should be noted, isn't even one of these. Lance simply insists time and again that he has never tested positive, even after the Rumsas and Millar cases (not to mention countless others) have proven that this defense is completely unsatisfactory.

Defending Lance didn't become any easier after his ill-considered antics regarding his nemesis Filippo Simeoni in Stage 18. Lance was supposedly defending not only himself but also the honor of his friend and advisor Dr. Ferrari. Yet according to former champions Greg Lemond, Andy Hampsten as well as the conventional wisdom of the cycling world, Ferrari has been a major proponent of EPO. By associating himself with acknowledged cheater, Lance does himself and the sport of cycling no good at all. He only adds credibility to David Walsh's (and Lemond's) accusations that he almost certainly used EPO in the past and is probably using it now.

It may well be that Simeoni was lying about Ferrari and Ferrari has cleaned up his act. Lance claims there is a larger history of Simeoni lies, though he doesn't give details. He says he was "protecting the interests of the peloton" (whatever that means). If Lance wants my respect as a fan, he needs to come up with a better story than this. Because from where I'm sitting, by becoming a mafia-like enforcer against one of the only riders with the guts to testify in court against doping and dopers, Lance made a mockery of everything this sport and his own heroism is supposed to be about. By going out of his way to humiliate Simeoni, Lance put himself on the side of doping and dopers, along with their contemptible hypocrisy.

As UT's John Hoberman explains doping has been around a long time in cycling. It definitely didn't simply go away after the scandal of 1998 (which involved, btw, many of today's best riders, including Richard Virenque). As the recent Manzano affair illustrates, doping remains a potentially lethal danger. It may well be that certain banned substances are actually safe and should be allowed. Certainly the peloton itself seems to have made a collective decision to tolerate certain substances, meaning they themselves judge the danger to be relatively low.

Yet the hypocrisy and lying continue. Until the peloton ends its culture of mafia-esque conformity and zipped lips, every single one of them deserves to have their credibility as an athlete doubted.

It is hard to come up with more eloquent words on the destructive force of doping than David Millar’s own in an interview with L’Equipe.

I took EPO while I was in Manchester [prior to the Worlds]. The two syringes that were found at my home are those that I’d injected myself with in Manchester. I kept them at home to remind myself that I had become world champion by doping myself. I had dreamed of becoming world champion. I did it, but I cheated. You dope because you become a prisoner of yourself, of the glory and the money. I’m not proud that I doped myself. I wasn’t happy. I was a prisoner of the person I had become.

The sport of cycling is too noble and dignified to tolerate doping. If Lance is guilty, it will be sad to see his myth marred. But I would rather see Lance marred than for cycling to continue as a sham.